


Writer AU

by DarlaBlack



Series: Scenario: 5 Things [6]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-08 02:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16420823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlaBlack/pseuds/DarlaBlack
Summary: AU in which Mulder is a writer of science fiction stories and Scully is a scientist hired by his editor to fact check his novel.





	Writer AU

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this a while ago on tumblr, and forgot to publish it here, too. It get's a bit meta for a quick sec. It's also irredeemable fluff.

—

**1.**

He wants this one to be different. He needs the science to feel more real than the speculative world-building he’s done in his last three books. The universe should feel like ours, he thinks—its physics and its materiality should have the same weight. Its atoms the same heft. This is going to be the one, he thinks. The one that puts his name on the charts. It needs to not just be right, but to  _feel_  right. He calls his editor, asks about a consultant.

His index finger disappears inside the looping plastic phone cord as he talks—feet on the desk beside his word processor.

“Well, I might know someone,” his editor says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah… she’s good. Not usually her line of work, but she’s bored with her day job. I think she’d take it on.”

“You think.” Mulder senses hesitation—the pause draws out a moment too long. “Charlie?”

“Yeah, Mulder. The thing is, it’s my sister.”

“Your—huh.”

“I’ll give her a call tonight if you want?”

“Okay.” The chair creaks as he sits up to bring the receiver to it’s cradle, but then at the last minute—“Hey Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“Is she hot?”

The line goes dead.

 

**2.**

She is, though. Hot. Not porno hot, but… something. Dana Scully is short and fresh-faced, spring-stepped and the tiniest bit awkward a suit that seems ill-fitting, a little uncomfortable. She’s a pathologist—usually spends her days in scrubs, he thinks. But she majored in physics and her science is blade sharp, a razor to scrape his work clean.

“So in the novel,” she says, “It’s a conspiracy of men?”

“And aliens,” he says.

Her look is wariness and amusement, eyebrows to the hairline, red lips pinched to hold in a smile.

“See, they’re working together. They’re developing a colonizing agent that will wipe out most of the population.”

“Unless your hero can stop them.”

“Right.”

“And he’s a scientist?”

“Yeah, that’s the plan.”

“He’s working alone?”

“He has kind of a sidekick, a friend who’s a conspiracy nerd, spends all his days in his mom’s basement, connecting dots.”

She purses her lips and he senses her skepticism.

“What?”

“Are there any women in the book?”

“The main character’s mom is in one scene. And there’s a sexy informant. Plus the aliens abduct several women, and I tell their stories too.”

The lip pursing has been joined by a disapproving squint. “Let me read your draft,” she says.

**3.**

It comes back with notes. So very many notes. At first he balks—digs in his heels and swears at the marked-up manuscript on his desk. He throws a pillow, kicks his trash can. He wanted  _science_ notes, not… ugh.Of course, she has given him the science notes… and story notes and character notes and structural notes and even a few on language. He ignores the last page, where she’s placed a yellow sticky-note:

_I know this is a lot but it’s only because I really like it. I think it could be great. Call me and we’ll talk about it more?_

He frowns. He pouts. He doesn’t touch the book for a week.  _How dare she?_ He thinks. But then he thinks of her freckled face, that smile he’d gotten when he described the story, the way she’d gone nose-to-nose with his crazy ideas. After a while, and after he reads everything again, he realizes that she’s right.

He tucks away his pride. He works and works and works, thinking of her raised eyebrows, her little smirk, the whole time. Thinking of  _her_ , mostly. It’s three weeks before he’s happy with the draft, but he calls when he’s finished, nervous somehow, to hear her voice again.

“I thought you wouldn’t call,” she says. “I thought maybe… I’d gone a bit overboard with the comments.”

He laughs a little. “Yeah, well… me too, at first. But I think you’re right. About almost everything. Come over?” He’s surprised at how casual his voice sounds, how easy it is to ask her.

“Okay,” she says.

She comes to his apartment bearing coffee and a box of donut holes, stands his doorway looking vulnerable. Apologetic. She’s dressed casually this time—jeans and a maroon sweater. She tilts her chin in an I _’m sorry_  pout as she holds up her offerings.

He smiles. “Come in.”

Wary at first, not sure what to expect, she takes in his apartment: the art on his walls, his leather couch, his fish. She’s surprised at how comfortable the space feels, how she wants to curl up in his cushions, put her feet up, watch a movie with him—though she barely knows this man. A clean, printed manuscript rests on the coffee table. He gestures with his chin. “Take a look.”

She does. Her eyes go wide as she thumbs through the first chapter. “You made the scientist a woman?” She asks.

Mulder nods, chewing his thumbnail. He tries not to hover, sips coffee and chews donut holes instead. She got jelly ones, bless her. When she’s skimmed roughly a third, she sits back and looks up.

“Are they in love?” She asks, cheeks red.

“Maybe,” he says. “I hadn’t thought at first—“

“They should be,” she says, and now his face is red too. “Can I read it all?”

**4.**

She comes back again. And again. They spend evenings reading, sometimes aloud, her nose wrinkling when something’s not right, talking about the story, and then talking about other things. They watch  _Plan 9 from Outer Space_  and he makes her laugh when he recites the lines _._ He frowns at her unbuttered popcorn. They drink beer and she settles into his cushions. He watches her face while she reads. Watches her lips. She swallows hard when he tells her that there is a love scene.

“So he’s a little roughed up from his escape, and she thought he might have been dead. But then he shows up at her door, and he’s stolen some vials of the vaccine… It’s kind of a reunion, plus they think maybe they’ve won,” he explains.

Her knee is touching his. Denim against denim radiates heat up her leg. Her palms feel hot. “So what does she do?”

Mulder looks at her and there’s a smile in his eyes. He’s chewing his bottom lip. “Well first she yells at him,” he says.

“Hmm. He did do something kind of stupid.”

“He did,” Mulder concedes. “But then… then she kisses him.”

“She does?” Her breath sounds too loud in her ears. His tongue comes out over his lips again.

“Mm hmm.”

The air: so still. Fish tank burbling. Pages between them on the couch. He watches her pupils dilate. She shifts and her knee rubs along his thigh. “Oh,” she says.

And then he’s kissing her, thumbs at her cheeks, taste of coffee on his tongue. Her fingers come around his wrist, feel the pulse point, stroke the fine hairs beneath his watch. She falls. She is falling. She does not land. Somehow she knew. She knew it would be like this with him.

**5.**

His book does well, so much better than he expected, even gets nominated for a Hugo award.

On Sundays, they lay in bed and read the _New York Times_ Book Review, watching his title climb the list, smelling of sex and tasting of each other. He visits her at work, brings coffee, and vomits into stainless steel basin the first time he watches her use a bone saw. She tries not to smile, rubs his back, brings him a cup of water.

When the paperback edition of the novel comes out, he has a special edition printed just for her. It is Saturday and they are in the park, legs entangled, her head on his shoulder. “I have a surprise,” he says.

He hands her the copy and she frowns because it feels strange, the cover lumpy.

“What?” She asks, but he’s shaking his head.

“Open it.”

She does, giving him that squinty, skeptical eye he’s now so used to. He’s had the dedication page changed. Where it once said, “For Dana who made this book what it is,” it now reads, “For Dana, who makes my life what it is. Will you marry me?” Taped below it is a ring.

She gapes. She almost chokes. She smacks him with the book. “You sap!” She says. But then she is crying and putting on the ring and kissing him.

At their wedding, Charlie is insufferable. He drunkenly tries to take credit for bringing them together, not to mention for the book. They ignore him. They dance.

“Let’s write another one,” Mulder whispers into her hair.

 

-end-


End file.
